Gervais Longhorn, who had grown used to calling himself the Mirror Tyrant, swayed on all fours, shaking his head in an attempt to dispel the dizziness. He instinctively checked the condition of his defensive barrier, but fortunately, his artifact belt still held half of its initial charge. Although the hand of mist struck him with terrible force, it didn’t seem to carry any unique laws. The barrier raised by the belt was most effective at stopping this type of unenhanced physical damage.

  Still, a Skeletal Reinforcement youngster should not have possessed anywhere near this level of power. The Tyrant instantly recognized this was no longer a time for games or half-measures.

  “Juni—” The elder’s words were brutally cut short as a blurry fist, glowing with intense crimson energy, slammed into the faint blue sphere shielding him. The force hit like a falling mountain, ripping the Tyrant’s body from the ground and hurling it through the air, his white-robed silhouette a single, whistling blur. He smashed through several dune peaks, finally slamming into a buried boulder beneath the sand, sending shards of rock and clouds of dust into the air.

  Cade wasn’t willing to give his opponent any chance to recover. After the giant mist hand slapped the old man out of the air, his life signature never dimmed. It meant the elder possessed a powerful defensive artifact, likely far better than Darkheart’s vambraces.

  The Asura's form flashed forward, covering the distance between them in an eyeblink. The old man barely managed to retreat upward, his body mere inches from being cleaved in two by Legion. The sword pulsed menacingly with a deadly condensation of severing laws.

  The Tyrant sliced through the air toward the clouds at full speed, coughing up mouthfuls of blood. His spectral barrier had failed to fully protect him from the brutal blow, and even the small amount of force that bypassed it was enough to wound him. On top of that, something interfered with his circulation, trying to force his blood to run in reverse. It wasn’t difficult to resist, but the pressure was constant, unyielding, and utterly irritating.

  “You fuc—” once again the elder was forced to scramble, managing to twist his body a sliver of time before the rusted six-foot sword nearly disemboweled him. With his belt’s barrier used up, Gervais was no longer in the mood to continue this fight. His opponent was relentless, and the risk wasn’t worth the reward. The Tyrant was dumbstruck by how fast his enemy was. Realizing that escaping wasn’t currently an option, Gervais felt he had little choice left. Clenching his teeth, he brought out his war spear.

  Cade blasted through the air after the old man with ravenous Legion cackling in his grip, Blood Wings still wrapped around his torso. The elevated qi expenditure was worth withholding this trump card. He was preparing to push even more ignited blood qi into his scarlet ribbons when a dozen spectral clones tore from the Tyrant’s body, bursting forward to intercept him. More clones followed behind them, their identical war spears shining threateningly. Cade’s pupils widened when he saw the old man release more than four dozen clones in less than half a breath.

  How big is his qi reservoir?!

  Now it made sense why Gervais was so confident and how he’d survived for so long. Even if each clone held only a tenth of his power, that still meant defending against fifty attackers. Whether body refiner or qi cultivator, none could survive that—unless they had powerful defenses, a significant rank advantage, or exceptional skill at fleeing.

  “Junior, I can’t believe you forced me into using my complete Mirror Phalanx!” he heard the Tyrant’s enraged voice. After withstanding two powerful blows, Gervais became convinced this youngster had somehow concealed his true cultivation, tricking everyone into thinking he was a mere Skeletal Reinforcement nobody. Even though the Tyrant had a dozen other artifacts and several more battle arts, he knew that none of them would suffice to counter his opponent’s vicious strength and unwavering determination to end his life. The Phalanx was the elder’s only option, one that had never failed him before.

  Cade immediately retreated, followed by a stream of silent clones, the Tyrant hiding among them. He could no longer tell where his opponent was, as all life signatures were now identically influenced by his oppressive aura. Gritting his teeth, the Asura emptied half of his voracious heart. Softly glowing red mist erupted from his pores, its tendrils wrapping themselves around his body and rapidly solidifying into a set of heavy crimson armor. Less than a quarter of his total blood qi remained in the heart.

  The clones swarmed him from all sides, their spears stabbing from a dozen directions. Legion swirled in Cade’s hand, forming a defensive barrier following the basic Four Faces of War doctrines.

  The Asura sighed inwardly. Though he had a danger sense, about half the attacks still slipped through. Within the Four Faces of War was a dedicated sub-style for fighting multiple opponents, but he hadn’t had time to learn it yet. Fortunately, his Life Armor absorbed these blows with ease. The clones were numerous, but their individual strength was low—at best matching a great circle Qi Condensation cultivator.

  Nonetheless, Cade remained fully focused. Each time his danger sense rang louder, he knew it was the Tyrant himself attempting to sneak in an attack. The Asura pretended not to notice but always positioned himself so the strike would either miss by a hair or glance harmlessly off his armor.

  After a few breaths of this sustained onslaught, Cade noted the Tyrant seemed to have stopped moving around so much, clearly no longer as concerned about being discovered. He kept an eye on the state of his Life Armor, sensing it still had half of its durability left. Considering it must have resisted over a hundred qi-charged spear strikes—weak as they might have been—it was still nothing to scoff at.

  Gervais watched the flickering red silhouette with satisfaction, finding this situation similar to many others from the past. An overwhelmed target could not defend for long. Most of his victims ended up attempting to flee, but very few managed to successfully escape. The Mirror Phalanx was a truly domineering battle art.

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  However, while he was tempted to kill the overwhelmed youngster himself, the two blows he had suffered were still fresh in his memory. This level of strength far outmatched all early Muscle Enhancement cultivators he had fought against. Instead, the Tyrant positioned himself behind three rows of clones. He took direct control over one and sent it toward the elven girl visible in the distance.

  Cade was already gearing up to strike when he saw a figure blitzing toward the defensive formation protecting the young elf, and all the clones laughed in unison. Earlier, while chasing the elder across the sky, he had to recall his red mist—it was part of him and couldn’t be stretched endlessly. Inevitably, this revealed the elven girl’s position.

  “Decisions, decisions, Junior!” fifty throats yelled together, laughing maliciously, as the single clone was now only a few dozen feet away from the girl.

  Cade didn’t think twice and swiftly activated the diagram for the terror effect, using his Life Armor as a conduit.

  The sensation of unspeakable terror struck Gervais like a punch in the gut from the devil himself. It lasted only a fraction of a moment, not enough to fully break his control over the Mirror Phalanx.

  But it was enough to sever the connection between his mind and the distant clone. Deprived of control, the spiritual replica slammed into the ground at full speed no more than twenty feet from the elven girl, shattering into a mass of harmless, glowing particles.

  When Cade triggered the diagram, he was already on the move, Legion blazing in his grip with potent qi-severing laws. He burst forward fast as a lightning bolt, powered by ignited red mist flowing through his wrapped ribbons. His body warped, cutting through three rows of spiritual clones as if they were nothing but air.

  Four Faces of War: Piercing Thrust!

  This ability’s diagram possessed its own powerful laws focused on penetrating enemy defenses. He had previously narrowed down the area where the Tyrant was hiding, and now, the mist’s terror allowed him to pinpoint his life signature with deadly precision.

  “Jun—” Gervais was left speechless when a massive armored figure appeared before him out of nowhere, a blast of displaced air slamming into his face. From beneath his opponent’s red hood, two empty eye sockets stared at him without emotion, underscored by a fanged, skeletal mouth frozen in a perpetual grin. Sudden warmth spread through his chest as his heart burst like a water bubble under powerful piercing laws imbued into the blade’s tip. Befuddled, he shifted his gaze to the growing crimson spot on his white robe. He didn’t even notice when his qi barrier shattered; all he could see was several feet of dark, rusted steel punching through his torso. His vision swayed.

  “Ju…nior...” the Tyrant eked out between ragged breaths.

  “An ant should know when it stands in front of a tiger,” Cade hissed, grabbing the elder's feeble shoulder in his armored grip and slowly pushing the sword through.

  “Go,” he commanded into his realm of consciousness.

  Legion’s blade erupted with piercing scarlet light as the spirit engaged its ancient assimilating formations, dragging the elder’s soul into the blade. A harrowing cry joined Legion’s ecstatic scream—having one’s soul torn from the body was agony beyond human comprehension.

  The Tyrant screamed as well, his brain hemorrhaging under the strain, his eyeballs bursting in their sockets. Then his body sagged. As Legion’s light dimmed, the Asura’s sixth sense fell silent, once more sinking into complete dormancy.

  “Hahaha!” Legion laughed joyfully as an abundance of soul qi flooded his parched body. Cade noticed a few specks of dark rust flaking off the blade near the weapon’s guard, the sword’s original shining silver surface peeking through. An eye-blink later, a tiny figure of the Mirror Tyrant himself appeared within the cleared spot, represented in all its living detail, as if engraved by a master jeweler. It silently yelled something at Cade, who observed all of this with morbid fascination before switching to his realm of consciousness.

  “Have you captured his soul?” he asked with a hint of excitement.

  “Yes, Master. I can now use its energy to rapidly recover some of my lost strength, or leave it for now so you can speak with him first. Or, hehe, fifty-fifty,” Legion chortled, very content with itself.

  “I can talk to him?!” Cade exclaimed.

  “Of course, Master,” the spirit answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “After all, I’m a high-grade soul repository—not some random spirit bin.” Legion scoffed, not even trying to conceal the pride in his voice.

  “Alright, alright,” Cade chuckled. “Leave just enough soul qi for him to remain coherent and keep his memories. I’ll see what he knows later. For now, refine his ghastly arse so he begins to understand the suffering and torture he was so vocal about before.”

  Hearing this, Legion trembled with joy, already holding such a succulent meal securely in his grasp.

  Cade smiled, then let out a weighty sigh, sensing battle fatigue settling in and his taut body relaxing. Using his wings without unfurling them, in combination with full mist ignition and Four Faces of War’s Piercing Thrust, had used nearly all of his remaining blood qi. However, it was also the first time that igniting so much mist didn’t harm his body.

  He knew that he could have ended the battle much earlier if he had used his newly learned War Form. However, he didn’t dare to shapeshift a couple hundred miles away from the monastery. It was the same with his Blood Wings. While the transparent ribbons weren’t necessarily condemning, they would definitely raise eyebrows. He had enough on his plate without some old monster starting to pay more attention to his person.

  Cade pulled Legion from the Tyrant’s chest, wiping it clean with a linen towel before slipping the satisfied weapon into his ring. The spirit was already deep in cultivation. He then dissolved his armor, absorbing the leftover mist back into his body. He needed to recover more blood qi in case anything else happened—otherwise, he might spiral into bloodrage.

  After gulping down a total of three jugs of essence, the Asura landed softly next to the Tyrant’s elven speeder. Stretching his hand, he sucked the beautiful vessel into his ring, then turned towards the defensive formation he had set up over the girl, now partially buried in sand. It seemed she had lost consciousness. I must have accidentally flown too close, and caught her in range of my oppressive aura. Unexpectedly, the ability turned out even better than his original estimate. Such surprises were always very welcome.

  He placed the Tyrant’s body out of sight after removing his storage ring, opting not to dispose of the corpse just yet. Instead, he wanted the elven girl to at least have the option to witness and confirm that her tormentor was dead beyond any doubt. It wouldn’t erase the terrible memories, but it might offer her a small sense of security—and the feeling that justice had been served, however little consolation it offered.

  Just as he started dismantling the defensive formation, his life sense—which he now used almost mindlessly—picked up an approaching signature. It took him a moment to recognize who was coming.

  Aria Voidwalker?